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Biographical history

J. L. (Jack Lawrence) Granatstein is a historian, author, educator and defence and foreign policy commentator. He is the author of several works on Canadian military and political history, including 'Sacred trust? Brian Mulroney and the Conservatives in power,' (1986), 'Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian foreign policy' (1990), and studies of Mackenzie King.

He was born in Toronto in 1939 and attended Toronto public schools, Le Collège Militaire Royal de St-Jean (Grad. Dipl., 1959), Royal Military College, Kingston (B.A., 1961), University of Toronto (M.A., 1962), and Duke University (PhD., 1966). He served in the Canadian Army (1956-1966), then joined the History Department at York University, Toronto (1966-1995) where, after taking early retirement in 1995, he is Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus.

His activities outside of York are numerous. In 1995, Jack Granatstein served as one of three commissioners on the Special Commission on the Restructuring of the Canadian Forces Reserves, and in 1997, he advised the Minister of National Defence on the future of the Canadian Forces. He served as the Director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum (1998-2001), after which he joined the museum's advisory council. Granatstein has served as a member of the Royal Military College of Canada's Board of Governors. He is also co-chair of the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century and co-chair of the Advisory Committee of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. In 2003 Granatstein was the J. B. Smallman Visiting Professor at the University of Western Ontario. Granatstein has held the Canada Council's Killam senior fellowship twice (1982-4, 1991-3), was editor of the Canadian Historical Review (1981-1984), and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1982- ). The Royal Society awarded him the J.B. Tyrell Historical Gold Medal (1992) "for outstanding work in the history of Canada," and his book The Generals (1993), won the J.W. Dafoe Prize and the UBC Medal for Canadian Biography. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Memorial University of Newfoundland (1993), the University of Calgary (1994), Ryerson Polytechnic University (1999), the University of Western Ontario (2000) and McMaster University (2000). The Conference of Defence Associations Institute named him winner of The Vimy Award "for achievement and effort in the field of Canadian defence and security" in 1996. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada (1997).

Scope and content

Fonds consists of research files, committee files (including minutes, memoranda, etc.), correspondence, professorial files (including notes, lectures, departmental business), financial records, publication files, printed materials, and other materials. Includes records related to the following publications: "The Politics of Survival: The Conservative Party of Canada" (1967), "Canada's War: The Politics of the MacKenzie King Government, 1939-1945" (1975, 1990), "A Reader's Guide to Canadian History 2: Confederation to the Present" (1982), "Bloody Victory: Canadians and the D-Day Campaign, 1944" (1984, 1994), "The Great Brain Robbery: Canada's Universities on the Road to Ruin" (1984), "Sacred Trust: Brian Mulroney and the Conservative Party in Power" (1985), "The Collins Dictionary of Canadian History" (1986), "How Britain's Weakness Forced Canada into the Arms of the United States" (1989), "A Nation Forged in Fire: Canadians and the Second World War" (1989), "Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy" (1990), "Mutual Hostages: Canadians and Japanese in World War II" (1990), "Spy Wars: Canada and Espionage form Gouzenko to Glasnost" (1990), "For Better or For Worse: Canada and the United States to the 1990s" (1991), "Dictionary of Canadian Military History" (1992), "The Generals: The Canadian Army's Senior Commanders in the Second World War" (1993, 1995), "Empire to Umpire: Canadian Foreign Policy to the 1990s" (1994), "Victory 1945: Canadians from War to Peace" (1995), "The Good Fight: Canadians and World War II" (1995), "Yankee Go Home? Canadians and Anti-Americanism" (1996, 1997), "Petrified Campus: Canada's Universities in Crisis" (1997), "The Canadian 100: the Hundred Most Influential Canadians of the Twentieth Century" (1997, 1998), "Trudeau's Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Pierre Trudeau" (1998, 1999), "Who Killed Canadian History?" (1998, 1999), "Prime Ministers: Rating the Prime Ministers" (1999, 2000), "Our Century" (2000), "Canada's Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace" (2002), Hell's Corner: An Illustrated History of Canada's Great War (2004), The Last Good War: An Illustrated History of Canada in the Second World War, 1939-1945 (2005), Lessons Learned? What Canada Should Learn from Afghanistan (2011), The Best Little Army in the World: The Canadians in Northwest Europe, 1944-45 (2015, 2016), The Weight of Command: Views of Canada's Second World War Generals and Those Who Knew Them (2016), Trudeau's World: The Insiders on Foreign Policy, Trade, and Defence, 1968-84 (2017), the New Canadian Readings series, the CIIA Contemporary Affairs series, as well as numerous scholarly papers, newspaper articles, and editorials. Fonds also includes a collection of reproductions of photographs from other Canadian archival institutions, documenting Canada's role in the World Wars and other significant events in Canadian history.

Also includes records connected to Granatstein's activities with the Marlborough Avenue (Toronto) Ratepayers Association, the Social Science Federation of Canada, the Canadian Historical Association, the Senate Sub-committee on Veteran's Affairs (regarding the CBC's "The Valour and the Horror"), the Historica Foundation, the Dominion Institute, the Vimy Ridge Memorial Foundation, the Never Forgotten National Memorial Foundation, the Conference of Defence Associations Institute, the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century, the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, the Canadian War Museum, the Royal Society of Canada, the Order of Canada, the Special Committee on the Restructuring of the Reserves, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's mini-series, Canada: A People's History; and oral history projects exploring the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party.

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Restrictions on access

All accessions are open except the following files which are closed until the time of Professor Granatstein's death: Canadian War Museum file relating to Adrienne Clarkson; jury selection files 2007-017/001(06) and 2007-017/002(07)-09). In the interim, the War Museum file may be viewed only with the written permission of J.L. Granatstein and requests must be directed to the University Archivist.